I like this a lot. I do wonder if it would be a little bit distracting on the eye, or if the eye would learn to filter it out a bit.
Don’t you like the way frequent posters makes the Topic feel a bit more like a room? At least that’s how it feels to me. Like I’m going into a room to talk about something, and these are the people inside that room. I’d miss it for sure.
Popular Links are seldom useful for me, but very useful in the few cases I need it(long topics).